The NFL didn’t have to wait long for the first major quarterback move of free agency, as ex-Vikings quarterback Kirk Cousins agreed to a four-year, $180 million deal with the Atlanta Falcons mere hours after the legal tampering period began.
Cousins, who is 35 and coming off an Achilles tear, was one of the best quarterbacks to hit true free agency in recent memory. This isn’t the first time for Cousins, who hit free agency in 2018 and signed with Minnesota. Since then, he has been a perennial above-average starter—not quite a top-10 quarterback, but certainly a top-16 one. Over an astonishing 145 career games started (88 with the Vikings), Cousins has grown from a system quarterback in the Shanahan offense to a wily veteran typified by toughness, aggressive throws, and work at the line of scrimmage. The Vikings tried to retain him, but Cousins took exactly one meeting in free agency—with Atlanta. And it didn’t let him get out of the building. In the words of The Athletic’s Dianna Russini: The Falcons were going to go as far as they needed to make this happen.
It was appropriate for the Falcons to get aggressive at quarterback now. General manager Terry Fontenot has led the team since 2021 and doesn’t have a winning season to show for it. He’s survived the firing of one head coach in Arthur Smith; most general managers don’t survive a second, if it comes to that. Fontenot needed to show Falcons owner Arthur Blank that he built a winning team over the past few seasons, and Cousins was necessary to prove just that.
Of course, there was another (and probably better) time to get aggressive at quarterback. That was 2023, when Ravens quarterback and reigning league MVP Lamar Jackson was signed to a nonexclusive franchise tag. Atlanta was quick to publicly declare its disinterest in Jackson, favoring second-year quarterback Desmond Ridder, who tried and failed to secure the starting job this season. Jackson is making $52 million per season and would have cost multiple picks via the nonexclusive tag mechanics, but Cousins isn’t going to win league MVP anytime soon. If the Falcons would spend big money at the quarterback position anyway, they missed a pitch over the middle of the plate last offseason.
Hindsight is 20/20, though: The Falcons almost landed Deshaun Watson for an even bigger deal and trade package—and think about how catastrophic that would have been. But that’s enough rehashing what could have been. Kirk will be making $45 million a year, which is a ton of money, and there is risk as he returns from an Achilles injury, but the name of the game here, again, is stability. He’s a rock-solid starter, and that’s what Atlanta desperately needs.
Why a solid starter? Because the Falcons haven’t made the playoffs in six seasons and just fired their head coach, Smith, after three straight seasons with a 7-10 record. Those three years saw the end of the Matt Ryan era, a placeholder year with Marcus Mariota, and a Desmond Ridder–Taylor Heinicke carousel. The Falcons have discovered over the past few years what many teams discover after a longtime franchise quarterback leaves: It’s tough out here without a quarterback.
But Ryan was a homegrown talent! Why not go back to the well with a rookie quarterback? The 2024 draft presents a rich quarterback class, and the Falcons have the eighth pick. But the urgency is on Fontenot’s roster to produce immediately, and it can. Below that underachievement and quarterback hot potato is quality bedrock on the offensive roster. The offensive line in Atlanta is set, with four of five starters signed through the next two seasons. While wide receiver Drake London has yet to post a 1,000-yard season, he clearly has the talent to and has suffered through that mediocre quarterback play. The same is true of tight end Kyle Pitts, who hasn’t had a 1,000-yard season since Ryan left the Falcons. Add in second-year running back Bijan Robinson, who looked like the star talent Atlanta hoped for when it used the no. 8 pick on him last year, and the Falcons offense is ready. All it needed was a quarterback.
That’s just one reason Cousins was a better fit for the Falcons than an alternative—such as drafting a passer at no. 8 or trading for Justin Fields. We know who Cousins is as a player; he has delivered unspectacular but quality football for almost a decade. Fields is mercurial; a rookie is unknown. Cousins will absolutely be able to maximize the existing talent on this well-built roster—if, of course, he comes back successfully from his Achilles injury.
Kirk isn’t just a steady hand at the wheel for Atlanta; he’s also a clear schematic fit. Cousins’s career took off under Sean McVay in Washington, where McVay was the play caller from 2014 to 2016: Cousins’s first few years as a starter. As McVay installed his offense in Los Angeles, he almost certainly used film from his time with Cousins in Washington as teach tape—that’s film Falcons offensive coordinator Zac Robinson was watching when he was on the Rams staff for the past five seasons. In the meantime, Kirk was in Minnesota operating Kevin O’Connell’s offense, which was largely derived from O’Connell’s time as McVay’s offensive coordinator in Los Angeles.
The interconnectivity here is the single biggest reason to be excited about Kirk in Atlanta. Cousins shouldn’t just walk into the building and understand the offense; he should be able to install the offense. Cousins’s experience running this system will be a huge help to Zac Robinson, a first-time play caller and generally inexperienced coach. It will help London and Pitts, as Cousins can fast-track them on the finer details of routes and timing and spacing. The Falcons should hit the ground running on offense.
While I’m bullish on the Falcons with Kirk, I don’t need to set lofty expectations for them—they’ve already done that themselves with the contract figure. At $45 million per year, Cousins, who is a legend at the bank, is now tied with Patrick Mahomes for the eighth-highest contract figure among quarterbacks.
Of course, all reported numbers are usually funny numbers. Structurally, the Falcons are committed to paying Kirk $45 million in each of the next two seasons: $90 million total. Beyond the 2025 season, Cousins has only $10 million in guaranteed money. The Cousins deal should be considered a two-year, $90 million deal with a couple of team options afterward. If Cousins is excelling and has clearly recovered from his Achilles injury, the Falcons can restructure that money in the form of bonuses, create immediate cap space, and try to win with Cousins in 2026 and beyond (he’ll be nearing 40, but, hey, quarterbacks are playing longer than ever!). If Cousins is struggling, the Falcons can move on from him without an enormous dead cap hit.
The two-year structure also fits with the rest of Atlanta’s accounting books. If the Falcons pick up Pitts’s fifth-year option, he’ll be a free agent after two more seasons. London is secured for two seasons without his fifth-year option. Right tackle Kaleb McGary is secured for the next two seasons as well; left tackle Jake Matthews is for the next three seasons and is easily cuttable in 2026. The Falcons offense, built by Fontenot, just started a two-year clock to prove that it can work.
So the deal is far more of a short-term rental than it initially appears, but $45 million is $45 million no matter which way you slice it, and that’s what Kirk will make in each of the next two seasons. Quarterbacks who make $45 million are expected to lead contending teams, make playoff pushes, and appear in (and win) Super Bowls.
Is a Cousins-led team really capable of those heights? Probably not. But at the same time, I watched Baker Mayfield play in a divisional-round game this season; I watched Brock Purdy and Jared Goff fight for a Super Bowl berth. With every season that passes, quality starters at quarterback seem to take more teams further into the postseason than ever before. Cousins will set the floor for Atlanta—it should be a playoff team—but the ancillary pieces will set the ceiling. Just how good of a WR1 is London? Just how good of a play caller is Robinson? We don’t know the exact answers yet, and we won’t until the season is well underway.
The raised floor, lifted by Cousins’s deal, is reflected in the division. The Falcons are the clear favorites in the NFC South. FanDuel Sportsbook has Atlanta at -110 to win the division, which is an implied probability of just over 50 percent; the next-closest team is the Buccaneers, at about 25 percent. Cousins is the best quarterback in the division, leaping over fellow journeymen in the Saints’ Derek Carr and Buccaneers’ Baker Mayfield, both of whom are also on hefty veteran deals. Throw in the Panthers, who have been floundering for years, and it’s unsurprising that Atlanta is a clear favorite to win what should be the league’s weakest division.
The soft division, the quality offensive roster, the willingness to pour money into the contract—all of this made Atlanta a good spot for Kirk, just as Kirk was a good target for Atlanta. Cousins could have taken meetings with the Steelers, Broncos, or Raiders: Not one of those has as good of an offensive roster as the Falcons or an easier path to a home playoff game. Minnesota—with Justin Jefferson, Jordan Addison, and T.J. Hockenson—could have argued it has equivalent offensive talent. But in a division with the Lions and the ascending Packers, the climb to the playoffs was much tougher. The Falcons were the best team for Kirk, and Kirk was the best quarterback for the Falcons. This is a great fit and a solid deal for all sides.
There are still plenty of ways it can go wrong. The Achilles injury hangs over Cousins, who is an older quarterback. Even if he returns from injury at 90 percent, losing any velocity in his fastball or any springiness in the pocket is an enormous deal for a quarterback who figures to start declining soon. But that’s the risk you have to take—and relative to drafting a rookie quarterback, it’s a pretty small one.
So expect big things out of Atlanta and Cousins—just not too big. Pleasant competency, plus surprising and occasional excellence. Maybe they’ll run hot and hit on a couple of key defensive contributors in the draft who can spark a deep playoff run. Maybe they’ll run cold and limp to a wild-card loss against a frisky 5-seed. Either way, the Falcons’ quarterback problem has finally been answered—and the standard in Atlanta has been raised.